Eva Cigler - March 17, 1982

Deportation

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Do you remember the day they rounded you up?

Yes, I think...

Can you describe that for me?

uh, it was May 18 or 17. Because in May 20, we get to Auschwitz. So it was, I think, three days 'til the train was going. So they rounded us up uh, block by block. You go this wagon and you go in that wagon. And they push us like cattles in a wagon. And when it was all uh, filled up the transport was going.

What were you allowed to take with you?

Just what you had on. And maybe one more coat or one more shoe more. So you grab a little things, like you really need a comb or two extra pair of uh, the men pants, and uh, extra dresses. So a little bundle, not much. And they put us in a wagon and the wagon uh, was already in the late afternoon when they uh, tried to uh, pull away. But before they pulled away the SS was coming to put us in a wagon. And some uh, girls they didn't--I don't know if they didn't like or not, he said you come down from the wagon, already she was there. And she said, you strip, put everything off, take everything off...

Strip.

Strip. And then they had a, a stick. And they went, he said turn around and everybody was looking out and we was crying what they was doing with that young uh, girl. She wasn't more than eighteen, nineteen years old. And we--from that stick they pick up the breast, pick up her breast. And then uh, after that when it was ten minutes already, when they was turning her around and around and hitting her and then they said you could go back to the wagon.

They stripped her and they beat her.

Yes.

On her breasts.

On her breasts and her back. And she was standing there naked 'bout uh, ten—fifteen minutes. And after that she came back to the wagon and that's all. That's what we see.

To your wagon.

Yeah.

And then she went on the transport?

Yes.

What happened when you got--you went, you must have gone to a train station and they round you off with the...

I, I don't know, we, uh... A train, the train came right to the ghetto.

It did.

Yes. And from the ghetto where we went was at nighttime already we was traveling. And we know we was uh, going already because my father start to cry and he said, they gonna... The wagons sto...the trains stop at uh, I don't know it was midnight or sometime later uh, and we heard some water. So we must passing a bridge or something and the train stopped there. And he start to cry, my father, he said that's the end of us. They're going to throw us everybody down in the water. But the train stopped for, stopped there and uh, 'bout ten or fifteen minutes and then it's went.